Saturday, July 9, 2016

I believe that all humans seek happiness, and I’ve come to think
that attaining happiness is our purpose in life. Whether an individual is
religious or not (and it makes no difference which religion one follows) we all
strive to make our lives better, which means some sort of movement towards
attaining what we imagine to be happiness.

Yet, achieving true happiness in today’s society has become,
more and more, ill defined, elusive, and ungraspable. For many, those moments
of occasional joy that life brings are fleeting, and bouts of happiness feels
like something that comes out of the blue, and disappears just as quickly.

I believe this because this is how I created a life full of
happiness for myself, after decades of striving to achieve it. For me that
first meant meeting several basic needs: a quiet home environment where I could
write, a loving partner, caring friends, basic food and material needs. But I
needed more to be truly happy. And that more, I eventually learned, was a
willingness to reach out to others, to create a feeling of affinity and
goodwill, even in the briefest of encounter.

The Dalai Lama once said, “My religion is kindness.” That simple
statement had a profound effect on me. It seemed more compassionate than the
old “Do Unto Others” I’d always tried to follow. After much thought, I made
that my religion as well. Every hour of the day, I strive to show kindness to
all living creatures.

It sounds simple, yet it was extremely difficult for me. And I’m
still striving to make it a way of living. What is hard is crushing my ego so
that I put others needs before mine, even people who rub me the wrong way. But
with inner discipline, it can be realized.

I no longer compete with my fellow men and women. I put their
needs above my own. Even when people are rude or insulting, I try to absorb
those negative feeling and respond with kindness. When I hear political
discussions where people are insulting one politician or another, I refuse to
participate. Not that I don’t have my opinions on politics, I simply refuse to
be rude to anybody.

And what I’ve found over the last few years, is this attitude of
kindness is the key ingredient for making my life happy. Call it karma. Call it
anything you want. Being kind to others makes me feel good. It brings happiness
to my fellow humans, and it brings a double measure of happiness back to me.

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Books By Alan Chin

About Alan Chin

I write novels, short stories and screenplays.
I am the author of eight published novels and three unpublished screenplays. You can read about all my pubished works at http://alanchinauthor.com
I live and write half of each year at my home in Southern California, and spend the other half of each year traveling the globe with my husband, Herman Chin.